Airliner World analyses the trials, tribulations and triumphs of turboprop titan ATR
If you were in the market for a turboprop in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you’d have been spoiled for choice. While the previous two decades had seen a wave of consolidation reduce the number of European and US aircraft manufacturers drastically, from 1983, no fewer than seven airframers conducted the first flights of ten different propeller-powered products over the next decade. The crowded house would become lost in the shuffle, as manufacturers struggled to secure hard-fought orders and regional jets began to reign supreme as the millennium edged closer.
Today, just three companies – ATR, De Havilland Canada (DHC) and Embraer – remain in the turboprop game. Of those, DHC paused Dash 8-400 production in February while Embraer is currently working on its first propeller-powered product since the EMB 120 Brasilia.
Meanwhile, across 40 years, ATR has come from obscurity to establishing itself as the go-to company for the turboprop market, with an almost unchallenged monopoly.
In the beginning
ATR was formed as a joint venture and equal partnership between Aeritalia and Aerospatiale, which had both been working on regi…
